Pain likely, but deepwater rigs better placed

摘要

As a result of a much lower oil price, most oil companies will have significantly reduced cash flow in 2015. This means that, for many of them, reprioritising their spending is inevitable, and the extent to which the offshore vessel sector is affected could depend on where the expenditure 'axe' falls - on land or in the deepwater areas of the Gulf of Mexico. In the short term, there is not always the flexibility to make decisions based solely on fundamentals, and so the first impacts may well include projects that, in the long run, remain viable. As a high cost environment, the deepwater sector in the Gulf of Mexico would appear to be vulnerable, and indeed, cuts should be expected there.